53 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan Safran FoerWe Are the Weather
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Jonathan Safran Foer
This book could only have been written by Foer. The magical realism of his first books of fiction, and the positive reception they received, gave him the authority to switch genres and still write with a compelling literary voice. He is well positioned to write a researched nonfiction book about climate change and include poetic and literary language, including his beautiful metaphors, at the same time. His talent as a writer allows him to weave personal essay with scientific inquiry, but it is his position in the modern literary canon that allows this contradictory style to be accepted by a large audience. It is also what makes his writing such a book worthwhile. Where countless voices have contributed to the climate change conversation, it takes a well-respected voice like Foer’s to break through the noise and actually have an impact.
One of the major threads of the book is Foer’s admittance that he himself has made mistakes, and he is willing to admit to them. He lied when he was on tour for his previous book, Eating Animals, by presenting himself as a vegetarian when in fact he was still eating meat. This confession is striking, displaying a vulnerability that, even in its betrayal, endears him to his readers. His fallibility is relatable and inherently human, making it easy for readers to bond with him. The content of the lie also connects him to his readers because he accedes, as throughout the work, that what he is asking—for readers to give up meat—is not easy, and they will make mistakes. By relating his personal experience to the topic at hand, he again humanizes his position and makes it easier for readers to consider taking up his torch.
Foer also utilizes his personal experiences with his family to further relate to his readers—or, rather, help them relate to him. His identity as a grandson and father, roles on seemingly opposite ends of a timeline, serve as relatable symbols of values and motivations. Employing these personal ponderings makes Foer seem real to readers, who may likely identify as grandchildren, children, and parents too. They also make the very scientific, and therefore unapproachable, conversation of climate change feel real and impactful on a personal level. By including these personal pieces of himself in his work, Foer makes his argument far more poignant.
Foer briefly attended medical school before dropping out and writing full time. This indicates that he is a writer who can make logical deductions about problems we face, particularly in the realm of science. This gives him the credibility readers need in order to trust him. But it his literary writing and passion for metaphor that speaks faultlessly to his themes. It is his talent and his experience that give him a creative edge and allow readers to respond emotionally to his work.
Safron Foer’s Grandmother
Foer’s grandmother is a pivotal figure in the book because she is not only the reservoir of pathos that helps readers align with Foer and his love for her, but because she represents the idea of sacrifice. Giving up everything, taking her winter coat and a pair of her sister’s shoes, Foer’s grandmother escapes death by the Nazis. But in the process, she loses everything she knows. Her courage and sacrifice are the ultimate example for Foer, who awaits her death with love and grace.
She stands as an emotionally dense symbol and a foil for readers, who must ask if they can make a sacrifice that pales in comparison to the one his grandmother made. Her loss was difficult, Foer says, but ours will be far larger. His grandmother functions to evoke pathos and also to signal that we now have a higher mountain to climb, but with her sense of resoluteness and moral strength, we too can overcome.
Jan Karski
As a Catholic, Karski was free to leave Poland and make an excursion to the United States to ask for help. He was tasked with the difficult challenge of making the Americans believe the truth of the experience of the Jewish community under Nazi control—but Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, himself a Jew, didn’t believe Karski.
Karski made tremendous effort to speak of sacrifice, abominable war crimes, and ethnic cleansing to the Americans and to ask for help, but the truth he told was so horrific, it was too much to accept. “Frankfufter didn’t question the truthfulness of Karski’s story” (19) writes Foer. The problem was that he didn’t believe it. Belief and truth are different positions. Karski went away from that meeting deeply and profoundly discouraged, and six million Jews were eventually killed by the Nazis.
Karski represents is the messenger of sacrifice. In invoking this story and repeating it throughout, Foer is asking whether we will be like Karski or like Frankfurter. When truths are so ugly, we would rather avoid them than face them and take action. Can we overcome this human instinct and take action in climate change, the results of which could kill far more than the subjects of Karski’s plea?
Roy Scranton
Roy Scranton is a key figure because his writings present for Foer and the reader another perspective on global climate change. Foer quotes and discusses two of his essays, both from the New York Times. The first, “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene,” is one Foer uses as another voice in the conversation. We are already a dead culture, Scranton argues. His stance dovetails into Foer’s position, which is that only once we know we are dead can we truly get down to work. That time has not yet arrived, to both writers’ consternation.
Foer quotes Scranton’s essay “Raising My Child in a Doomed World” at length, sharing Scranton’s perspectives on the awe and despair he feels when his child is born. Foer calls Scranton a “damned good writer” (196), and, according to Foer, Scranton has the ability to articulate the crisis in philosophical terms that communicate the urgency of our reality with climate change. However, Foer realizes Scranton’s position is more of a suicide note than a hopeful dispatch. This differs from Foer’s perspective; he does not believe our despair, though reasonable, means that we must give up. This is the moment readers understand that Foer still has hope, however small.
As a key figure, Scranton functions to help us align our sensibilities with the author’s, but he is also a point of departure. Foer deepens his experience with the climate crisis through Scranton in order to separate himself from the despondency of Scranton’s writing. Compared to Scranton, Foer seems if not optimistic, at least hesitatingly hopeful and committed to putting in effort to support his cause.
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